Atlanta residents complain of excessive recycle bins

ATLANTA - Residents in multiple neighborhoods said the city of Atlanta wasted tax dollars by delivering two new recycling bins to every house.

“I just thought it was ridiculous,” Foxy Jones said.

Jones lives on Valley Green Drive in north Buckhead, where it looks like recycling day every day. Several new bins are sitting on the curb when homeowners already have one in their driveways.

“I think it’s outrageous. I think everybody in Atlanta, we pay so much in property taxes and our taxes are so high. To see that kind of waste is upsetting,” Julia Cullerton said.

Cullerton said she was relieved when she got a new 96-gallon recycling bin a few months ago as part of the city’s recycling campaign.

“We were happy to have it because we could increase our recycling, but then, I’d say a month ago, that new can just showed up on the curb, and everybody along the street also got one,” Cullerton said.

The city spent $2.3 million to deliver the new recycle bins to more than 65,000 homes. Since October, they’ve been dropped off in neighborhoods, and Mayor Kasim Reed said it was a massive program.

"This is another down payment on our commitment to become one of the most sustainable cities in America,” Reed said.

But when new bins showed up within months of each other at nearly every home in the Highlands and North Buckhead neighborhoods, residents said the down payment became a half-wasted payment.

“It makes me feel like how they just have a lot of money to waste if they are delivering new cans to everybody,” Cullerton said.

Channel 2 Action News called the city to see to find out how it is going to recycle the recycling bins.

In a statement, the city said:

“We recently completed delivery of 65,000 new 96-gallon recycling carts to our single-family residential customers. The carts were delivered at a rate of 1,000 per day, to residents in all four quadrants of the city who did not already previously have one. We were quite pleased to only have 1% error in the overall delivery rate. With such an aggressive delivery plan, there were only 685 duplicates. This is a 99% success rate out of a total of 65,000 carts delivered which we completed ahead of schedule. The contractor collects these at no extra charge to the city.

Residents who may have received a duplicate bin should contact the Public Works Customer Service Center at 404.330.6333 or send an email to publicworks@atlantaga.gov and we will come pick up the extra bin.”